Booker T. Washington National Monument, located in Franklin County, Virginia, is preserved in public ownership as the birthplace and childhood home of Booker T. Washington, a slave who became a prominent educator and influential African- American leader in the period between 1895 and 1915. Developed in the 1940s as a private memorial and added as a unit of the National Park System in 1956, the site's early history as a memorial is itself a subject of interest and importance.